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New Orleans Police Face Swarm of Inquiries

A confrontation between the police and civilians after a killing on the Danziger Bridge is under federal investigation.Credit
Alex Brandon/The Times-Picayune, via Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — In its September newsletter, underneath a notice about using antibacterial wipes during flu season, the local Fraternal Order of Police reminded New Orleans officers they had a right to be represented by a lawyer when questioned by the F.B.I., whether as a witness or as a potential target.

The warning has become routine for the police over the last few months here.

Four years after the department was accused of acting lawlessly in suppressing violence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, dozens of officers, some from an elite unit, have been interviewed by the F.B.I. or faced subpoenas to testify before federal grand juries. F.B.I. agents seized files from the department’s homicide division.

And on a recent Saturday, a major city bridge, where police officers killed two men in the floodwaters of 2005, was shut by federal investigators for several hours.

At least three federal investigations into the police are under way; two concern civilian deaths in the anarchic days after the hurricane. Their outcomes could answer some of the most disconcerting questions of the storm’s aftermath — in particular, whether these were singular tragedies in the extraordinary chaos of the time or whether they laid bare deep problems in the force.

If indictments are brought against the officers, who in some cases have been celebrated as heroes of the storm, the impact — on the city’s race relations, on the coming mayoral election and on the essential but already brittle relationship between police officers and citizens — could be profound.

“Any one of those federal probes could be viewed as the most significant investigation in any F.B.I. office in the country,” said Rafael C. Goyeneche III, a former New Orleans prosecutor who is the president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a nonprofit organization that focuses on crime and corruption in Louisiana. Unlike many federal civil rights investigations, which often involve only a few officers, Mr. Goyeneche said, “these are much more extensive.”

The police are not alone as subjects of federal scrutiny. The list of city agencies under investigation seems to grow by the day, and news of another guilty plea or another high-level resignation — and the often shady circumstances surrounding it — is a regular feature of the front pages and evening news reports.

Photo

Sgt. Robert Gisevius Jr. of the New Orleans Police, in 2007 turned himself in in the Danziger Bridge inquiry.Credit
Dave Martin/Associated Press

But the investigations of the Police Department have a particular resonance, given the force’s troubled past and the city’s continuing high crime rate, including a murder rate that is the country’s highest. Contentious episodes have kept the department in litigation, including a 2008 racially charged bar brawl involving off-duty police officers and transit workers; the integrity bureau reportedthat officers tried to cover up the facts of the brawl, and some officers were fired. Officials acknowledge that there is a grave degree of mistrust between civilians and the police.

The most highly publicized episode under federal investigation took place on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans on Sept. 4, 2005, six days after the hurricane struck. The police, responding to a report that shots had been fired at officers and rescue workers, opened fire on six people, seriously wounding four and killing two, including a mentally retarded man.

The police said the officers were reacting to gunfire. Those who were injured, and the families of those killed, said they were victims of a police ambush. In 2006, the officers involved in the shootings were charged with murder and attempted murder, but the charges were dismissed last year by a judge who cited improprieties in the handling of the case.

Soon after, Jim Letten, the United States attorney for the district that includes New Orleans, announced that his office would open an investigation, along with the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.

Many residents are skeptical of efforts to re-examine the actions of anyone who responded to the anarchy of the flood, much as they have been to the questioning of doctors who may have played a role in the deaths of at least 17 patients at Memorial Medical Center here.

The circumstances were traumatic, skeptics say, and the city faces too many grave problems — a crowded crime blotter, a lack of medical facilities, thousands of blighted houses — to focus on the first responders, especially those who stayed to help, in the days after the storm.

“I don’t sense a lot of enthusiasm down here,” Peter Scharf, a criminologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, said of the investigation into the Danziger Bridge shooting. “What’s the endpoint of all this? Is this the best use of prosecutorial resources?”

Mr. Scharf pointed out that on a recent weekend, 13 people had been shot in a 12-hour period. While he supported investigations into corruption, he said there were legitimate doubts about scrutinizing “decision making in an extremely complex, chaotic environment.”

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A charred body in a car has led to another federal investigation.Credit
William Tanner

There are indications, like the seizing of files from the department’s homicide division, that the federal investigation is reaching broadly through the department. Watchdog groups say they are cautiously encouraged by the federal attention, pointing also to a recent scathing review of the city’s prison by the Justice Department.

Another hurricane-related police case, one that some analysts say could be far more explosive, involves the death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, who was shot by an unknown attacker four days after the hurricane and whose remains were eventually discovered in a car parked behind a police station. The car belonged to William Tanner, who has become a key witness in the federal investigation.

Mr. Tanner said he had driven the severely wounded Mr. Glover to a school that was serving as the temporary headquarters of a police special-operations unit, one that was later hailed as heroic for its hurricane rescue operations. There, Mr. Tanner said, the police handcuffed and hit him and confiscated his car. Weeks later, he said, he found the charred body of the car behind a district police station. Mr. Glover’s burned remains were inside.

A Police Department spokesman, Bob Young, said the police were looking into the circumstances of Mr. Glover’s death and cooperating with the United States attorney and federal authorities in their investigations.

Federal agents are scrutinizing the department’s special-operations unit, including some senior officers, for possible involvement in Mr. Glover’s killing and its aftermath.

Some, like Mr. Goyeneche, say fallout from the charges could be at least as significant as it was in the middle 1990s, when a soaring murder rate and police involvement in horrific crimes brought intense federal scrutiny.

Others are not as confident.

“The department’s needed changing for some time now,” said Eric Hessler, a former New Orleans police officer and now a lawyer who represents officers in the investigations. “If the F.B.I. has this level of interest in the department, they can’t not see that the department’s being neglected.”

Skeptically, Mr. Hessler added, “I would like to think that.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 9, 2009, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: New Orleans Faces Swarm Of Inquiries. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe